The Adventure of the Fob Watch
by Special Patrol Groupie
Summary: Formerly known as "Homo gallifreyensis." The full history of Sherlock Holmes. Actually a triple crossover with Star Trek TNG/Dr. Crusher. I've been meaning to continue this for some time but never found a way to do so. Now I have.
1. The Adventure of the Fob Watch

He dug through boxes he hadn't even looked at for ages, until he finally found it – a small, brown carboard cube, three inches on a side. He opened it and tore aside a layer of plain brown paper. The watch lay in a nest of more plain brown paper, gleaming dully in the morning sunlight.

"What are you doing?" came a voice from a distance.

He lifted the watch. The pattern on the cover – why hadn't it ever interested him before? It was intricate, complex – many circles intersecting, interlinked, concentric, like a Venn diagram gone mad. It was … familiar somehow. He ran over all the possible associations in his mind, but none of them checked out.

"What is it? Oh, it's a watch," said the voice. "How did he know?"

The strange man in the blue box had been correct. "You have a watch, an old fob watch, that you were told came from some ancestor of yours. It's dull gold, and you think that it doesn't work, but you've never tried to open it, let alone repair it. That's strange, because it has a pattern on it that should absolutely fascinate you. But it doesn't. And I suppose it doesn't matter because you'd never figure out what that pattern means, even though it will be apparent that it does mean something. Well, I'll give you a hint: If you open it up, you'll figure it out." And with that, he had stepped back into the box, and the box faded away with a sort of grinding noise.

He traced the pattern with one finger.

"What are you going to do with it?" the voice asked.

"What do you think, John? I'm going to open it."

And before John could say or do anything, he pressed the release button. The lid clicked aside –

"Sherlock! Sherlock!" John was shaking him.

"Oh, my head … what happened?"

"You opened the watch, and it … it shot you, and you fell unconscious, and – we should get you to casualty –"

"No, John, that won't be necessary," he said. "I'm perfectly fine."

"Perfectly fine, my arse! Your pulse is racing. 160, 170 at least!"

"That's normal," he said. "Don't you see, John? It was a disguise!"

"What was?"

"Still not following, oh, John!" He laughed. "That man – the Doctor – you knew it was him because he had a racing pulse and two hearts, right?"

"Yes?"

"Check mine now."

John felt one side of his chest, then the other. "That's impossible!" he whispered.

"Impossible according to your technological knowledge, not according to ours."

"'Ours'?"

The man John Watson knew as Sherlock Holmes laughed. "Oh, John … don't you see? When I opened the watch, it returned my full essence to me – I feel like I've been blind and had no idea, but now I see, and – "

"You're … an alien?" John exclaimed. "Sherlock Holmes is an alien?"

"Not an alien, a Time Lord, John. And my name is Orlonamaorlion – but if you want to keep calling me Sherlock, I won't object."

"But how did you – I mean –"

"Well, John, it goes like this …


	2. Homo gallifreyensis

The 206,723rd Plenary Meeting of the Taxonomical Commission of Gallifrey was an unusually disrupted meeting. All of them tended to have heated discussions of one kind of another, but most often they were about some species of plant or nonsentient animal life on a distant world – usually a species that no longer existed, one that had either gone extinct or evolved into a new species. Roughly once every 10,000 sessions they catalogued a new species of sentient life, and once every 30,000 that species was somewhat technologically advanced. But the species – really the group of species – being discussed by Orlonamaorlion, the young Academy Master of Xenobiology whose specialization was the unusual cluster of sentient species of the Orion Arm of the galaxy, was creating a great ruckus with his presentation. Nay, he was creating a series of ruckuses.

First of all, there was the startling news that all the sentient species in the Orion Arm had become genuinely spacefaring, since the people of III Sol had developed a faster-than-light propulsion system. Nowhere else in the galaxy were there such a large group of seemingly independently evolved species who achieved warp drive in the space of a mere millennium. But that was just the beginning.

"I have visited the Orion Arm on several occasions over the past 200 years," he told the packed auditorium of biologists and other interested individuals, "and I have walked the homeworlds of all its sentient species and spoken with them – on their own level, of course, never revealing my true origins or anything about our technology, all in accordance with the Laws of Time and with the permission of the proper authorities." He covered up his urge to roll his eyes by taking a sip of water. "I posed as a physician in various spacefaring and planetbound services for these species – again, never employing our technology to alter the outcomes of their cases, even when the cure for what was wrong with them was quite elementary by our standards –" he sighed at the memories of those who had to die because of his reluctant adherence to the Laws of Time – "and I have been able to take countless bioscans of them, as well as physical samples of various tissues and bodily fluids.

"I reached one conclusion, a rather expected conclusion, about these species – that they are all closely related to each other and may not have evolved independently after all. There is much debate among these people as to whether some unknown species called the Preservers 'seeded' the worlds in this sector with their species, or an ancestral form of their species. Evidence in their own archives indicates the 'Preservers' may have been some of the first Gallifreyan space travelers. But that is a matter for a separate study, one involving archaeologists, anthropologists, forensic linguists, sociologists and experts in early Gallifreyan history." He had to raise his voice to be heard over the muttering that broke out when he said the word "Gallifreyan." He paused to allow the discussions to die down.

"Several of the species in the Orion Arm have joined together to form what they call the United Federation of Planets. Another group is independent of the UFP but recently became allied with them after an ecological disaster; two others are independent and somewhat hostile to the UFP, though they have their own problems and movements are afoot in both these groups to form some kind of alliance with the UFP.

"Regardless of politics, the taxonomies of all four groups agree with my observations; they group themselves under the same genus, with species varying according to planets of origin." And that was one of the clues that Gallifreyans had been the Preservers – the fact that some of their early languages sounded like various older forms of Gallifreyan languages spoken before the world's languages fused into one global tongue.

"Of course, the ultimate test of such a classification is whether these species are capable of interbreeding, and I have met hybrids of most of these species and read reliable reports of other hybrids. Homo sapiens, the native species of III Sol, otherwise known as Earth or Terra, has successfully been crossbred with each of the others, and I personally met at least one of each of these part, ah, 'human' hybrids, to use a term the people of III Sol use for themselves, during my research. In short, I have no reason to doubt their classification, or our original grouping of these seven or eight species, as belonging to the same genus."

It wasn't necessary, but for an hour, he cited examples of similarities of biology that further backed up his claims. Although Orlonamaorlion was a careful, almost obsessive researcher, he did not take offense at the expressions of skepticism in the crowd at some of his wilder-seeming conclusions. His research would stand up to the scrutiny, he was certain. Besides, he knew they'd forget their objections to this part when they heard the next part.

"Now, I don't know if you were thinking along the same lines that I was when I started looking at these bioscans closely, but eventually it did occur to me that there was not a little similarity between the genus Homo and our own genus, Dominus. In fact, Dominus temporum, Homo sapiens and Homo betazedus are, in some ways more similar to one another than Homo vulcanis, for example. Homo vulcanis' blood is copper-based, but Homo sapiens and Homo betazedus both have iron-based blood, like Dominus temporum. Yet we know Homo vulcanis and Homo sapiens are closely related enough related that there are many human-Vulcan hybrids in that sector of the galaxy in that time frame. I believe the number was somewhere around 3,000 Federation citizens claiming one Vulcan and one human parent.

"The species Homo qo'nos has a dual nervous system that puts me in mind of the double cardiological system exhibited in Dominus temporum. Homo qo'nos and Homo sapiens, despite their political differences, have been successfully hybridized, as has Homo qo'nos with Homo vulcanis and Homo betazedus.

"Some of these combinations do require a certain amount of medical support to be able to conceive and bring a child to term, but no more so than their primitive medical technology can provide, and no more so than two people of the same species might require when one has a certain genetic defect or other medical condition that may interfere with conception or gestation."

He conceded that Dominus temporum had a far more massive brain, and used more of its brain capacity, than even Homo vulcanis or Homo ferenginarus, the most neurologically advanced species of the group. But that was simply an accident of having arrived on the scene earlier. Adjusted for how long it had been since evolving into their present species for them to develop various technologies, the entire Homo genus was making more rapid progress than Dominus temporum had. In fact, Homo sapiens alone was developing at an exceedingly rapid rate, and if it continued (he hedged his bet by saying it was only a statistical projection) they would surpass Dominus temporum in another 30,000 years. That set off the audience, and he waited a good ten minutes for the muttering to die down.

He knew it was just the prelude.

"So, Time Ladies and Time Lords, I find myself constrained to ask this question: Why the distinction between the genus Homo and our own – a distinction that seems increasingly artificial to me the more I think about it? Why do we not admit that we should add the various species of the genus Homo to our own? Or vice versa; whether we call ourselves Homo gallifreyensis or call them Dominus terranus, Dominus vulcanis, Dominus qo'nos and so forth is immaterial to me –"

And that was as far as he got before he was drowned out. He waited patiently, but the uproar only increased. There was a rule that if the disruption went on for a certain length of time at such a level that the speaker could not be heard by people in the front row, he or she must leave the stage and consider their presentation over – but until that evening, it hadn't happened for 27,662 years. Finally, the proctor drew his finger across his throat. Orlonamaorlion felt oddly giddy somehow. He took his data, bowed ironically to the hissing, jeering mob and exited with dignity.

The debate backstage was as heated as it was in the audience. A group of off-duty Chancellory Guards, hired to keep order, surrounded Orlonamaorlion and helped him make his way through the hostile crowd. At the edge of this crowd he saw the Academy headmaster and directed his guards to take him to him.

"Told you," said Lormondorn, shouting to be heard.

"I know you did," grinned Orlonamaorlion. "Truth be told, I'm surprised I got as far as I did."

"So am I," Lormondorn said, clapping Orlonamaorlion on the shoulder. He had reviewed Orlonamaorlion's presentation and decided to accompany the young scientist to this even to show his support for such avant-garde thinking. "But way to shake up those stodgy old Gallifreyan farts. They need something to get them out of their complacent little ruts. Now I suggest we make a hasty exit and get ourselves some dinner far away from here."

***

Lormondorn and Orlonamaorlion monitored the next days' proceedings from a safe distance as scientist after "scientist" gave off-the-cuff refutations of Orlonamaorlion's findings. Non-scientists started to weigh in, too, as word spread; the more isolationist their position, the more likely they were to denounce Orlonamaorlion and his insistence that Dominus temporum was just the big brother or elder cousin of all these primitives and not something special, unique, unduplicated and unduplicable. Others conceded that yes, perhaps someday the Homo genus would ascend to a level where they could be considered part of the genus Dominus– but not yet; there was a considerable amount of evolution yet to happen. Those who happened to agree with Orlonamaorlionism, as the media quickly dubbed his theory, were few in number and on the fringes of Gallifreyan society.

"I'm satisfied with the way things are turning out," Orlonamaorlion said. "Some of these people on my side were the same ones who believed there was life on other planets before we found that out for a fact." That was, given the artificially enhanced lifespan(s) of Dominus temporum/Homo gallifreyensis, literally true. "And they were howled down with the same vigour by some of the same people now howling me down."

"You're only able to say that because these fringe groups were _proven_ right when it came to other life in our universe," Lormondorn said. "If you could find some way to prove your statements about the link between Gallifreyeans and the Homo cluster, you'd shut them up just as quickly."

"I can think of a way," Orlonamaorlion said. "And it wouldn't take long. Five years, maximum."

"Are you putting in for a research grant?" Lormondorn asked.

"Yes, and research leave, and permission to take a TARDIS and go to the Orion Arm," Orlonamaorlion said. "And permission to, ah, interact with the natives of that sector. And to reveal at least the existence of Gallifrey and our people to a carefully selected female native of that sector."

"Denied," Lormondorn said crisply.

"Oh, come on—"

"The Research Grants Commission will never go for it! Neither will any of the other authorities who have to approve what you propose. Mating with a non-Gallifreyan?"

"I haven't even put together a formal grant request yet!"

"And you're not going to," Lormondorn said firmly. "Never mind the Laws of Time and our policy of non-interference; I know you don't believe in all that, or disregard it as you see fit, even though you adhere to it. Just what makes you think you can actually father a child? There's the Pythian curse still on, you know."

"That curse only applies to Gallifreyans," Orlonamaorlion said. "It does not apply to a Gallifreyan and a member of another species. At least from the way the curse was worded, I think that's the case. Regardless, after a half-year on Earth – that would be their years, which are about seven-eighths of our own -- I began to produce sperm that was viable, both in quantity and motility, and I continued to do so as I journeyed through the Orion Arm. It only stopped a few months after I returned to Gallifrey. And it started up again when I left Gallifrey, and stopped when I returned. Each time. Without exception."

Lormondorn looked at Orlonamaorlion, astonished, struggling for something dignified to say. Finally, he came out with: "You ... tested yourself."

"I was bored," Orlonamaorlion shrugged.

***

Orlonamaorlion did get his grant, though it took three years (and numerous deliberately provocative interviews with the media, to say nothing of the papers, academic and popular, he wrote) to convince the relevant officials that he should receive it. He wasn't particularly worried about the ultimate outcome of his campaign, though the objections some of the more stodgy officials raised led to some interesting rants echoing through the halls of the Biology Department at the Academy.

Then it took another year for him to make the necessary arrangements, personal and professional, to be gone for five years. Finally, though, he stepped into a TARDIS and was transported to Earth, which was the first stopping point – and the only one, he hoped – on his journey to find a female who would agree to take part in the experiment.

There were several reasons Orlonamaorlion chose Earth. One, he simply liked Homo sapiens. They were such a varied species, almost a microcosm of the galaxy, if they only realized it. The species as a whole was a little goofy – buffoonish, some Gallifreyans said, though he preferred to think of them as childlike – but they had unexpected reserves of strength, wisdom, staying power and toughness. They seemed very adaptable, more so than the Vulcans or the Ferengi, who were both more neurologically advanced but had built strict hierarchical societies and modes of thinking, almost to compensate for their complexities.

Despite what he had told the authorities on Gallifrey, he had accidentally revealed himself to one member of Homo sapiens, and this male had accepted what he had seen with scarcely more than a blink. Orlonamaorlion was so impressed by this young man that he had considered bringing him back to Gallifrey, but the youth actually turned him down. He cited the life of one of his ancestors, a woman from his cultural group and a distant relation at least. When her group was contacted by a member of a far more technologically advanced society, she had assimilated quickly, married one of the members of the new civilization and gone back to his homeland with him. She had little or no trouble with the newness of the culture or the different values in it, but she did have trouble with their pathogens, and died of a disease that would have only caused a minor annoyance to someone whose immune system had evolved in the presence of such things. He said he was sure Orlonamaorlion meant no harm, but that his foremother's story was a warning to him. Orlonamaorlion was impressed by the lad's ability to apply a lesson learned in one time and place to a seemingly unrelated but actually parallel situation.

Two, he had noticed on certain parts of Earth a problem with smart, (relatively) sophisticated, successful women having trouble finding suitable mates. These women were plenty attractive, but they seemed to overwhelm the men who were seeking partners. He felt he had spoken to enough of those men to conclude they were easily overwhelmed, and that his self-confidence would win over most human women.

Then there was the matter of locale. He had no real idea where to go, so he threw three arts at a map of Earth to narrow his choices. One of the darts landed on the seat of an administrative district's research university, a place called Eugene, in the northwest of one of the world's leading nations, and that's where he decided to go.

The town wasn't much at first glance, but on the campus there was that air of expanding minds and discovery he associated with the Academy on Gallifrey. Its library was immense (for this world), its buildings varied and imposing, yet not unapproachable; it just looked and felt like a place of learning to him as he strolled around wearing a long gray trenchcoat over a conservative blue suit, subdued tie and white shirt, an umbrella up over his wavy light brown hair. It rained here as much as it did in London, it seemed, but the air was fresher and cleaner, and the people more laid back. He was going to like this place.

He went into the employment office, shook off his umbrella, left it unfurled in a corner and checked the jobs board. As it happened, they had an opening for a biology professor. He smiled. This was going to be too easy.

He took an application packet, put it in a briefcase and walked out. The TARDIS crew was on the campus, the chameleon circuit having disguised itself as a pine tree. He waited until he was sure he was unobserved, then went inside, settled down at his computer terminal and called up the backstory he had invented for his cover. He glanced at the name on it: Norman Orland Leon. He had already memorized the details of Norman O. Leon's life: where and when he was born, where we went to school, past work experience, single, no children. He added specifics about his major, his graduate work, his PhD thesis; he listed nonscientific hobbies including hiking, snow skiing, water skiing, mountain climbing, cycling, whitewater rafting ... nothing you wouldn't expect of a biologist, in short.

He filled in some research paper titles based loosely on his own work, modified for Earth of course, made the necessary modifications to various journals' databases, added his name to several other research papers, memorized the whole curriculum vitae, proofread it, and printed it out.

Then he then was taken to a series of universities to make some minor adjustments to the memories of certain professors and post-grads. All he had to do was make sure they recalled Norm Leon and some of his contributions to the field. A few of them required more work to make them recall in some considerable detail lengthy conversations and long hours in the lab. A member of his crew, meanwhile, posing as a prospective student, took care of some of the professors in the biology department of the university in Eugene to make them think they'd read some of his published papers or met him at a conference somewhere. One young post-grad had gone to the same high school that Norm "attended" and in fact had lived a few blocks from Norm's claimed childhood address, and he had to be carefully worked over by several of the crew members to rearrange his memories. The processs wasn't quite as invasive as it might sound – the memories were mostly minor events involving another person; under hypnosis, the person came to believe that it was Norm who had been an actor in this minor scene. Once the hypnotic work had been done, follow-up visits had to be paid by others to make sure the memory adjustments had taken hold. Only when all the groundwork had been laid and double-checked did he submit his application.

Several weeks later, he was invited for an interview. He was taken to the airport in a city in the southeastern part of the country (really, a network of three cities where a cluster of well-regarded universities had taken root), then took a series of flights in an ion jumper to Seattle, where he rented a flitter and flew it to Eugene. Once there, he found a motel across a major street from the campus, checked in, and unpacked his luggage: a suitcase full of books and journals of biology, as well as some casual clothes; a garment bag full of suits and ties and the like; and the case containing his computer kit. It was cleverly disguised to look like a current era laptop computer, and if someone else got their hands on it, they would think it was a current-era laptop, but a series of passwords would unlock its true capabilities. And if someone stumbled upon the passwords by accident (highly unlikely) or managed to get it in its unlocked state, all they'd see was a random jumble of symbols – cleartext Gallifreyan, actually, but it would take them forever to decipher the language.

He signaled the TARDIS to let the crew know of his safe arrival and settled down to wait the evening out. He was glad he didn't need much sleep, because he didn't get it – these beds were so unfriendly to the backs of either Dominus temporum or the Homo genus, he wondered why they were allowed to exist.

The interview lasted several days, but went flawlessly. They were all convinced that they had heard of Dr. Norm Leon and were overjoyed to discover he was interested in the job. Sometimes Orlonamaorlion had a hard time not laughing at how easily he had altered their reality; other times, he pitied them. What he wanted to do was harmless. What someone else might want to do with the same ability ...

He endured the inefficient modes of transportation back to the Southeastern city, where the TARDIS collected him. There was nothing else to do, so he had them park the TARDIS on a remote, uninhabited islet in the middle of the South Pacific and wait out the results.

Finally the chairman of the university's biology department contacted him, as he expected, and offered him the job. The chairman apologized for the delay, but they had offered the job to another candidate first, who turned them down.

Orlonamaorlion raised his eyebrows at that news. Offered it to someone else! Maybe they weren't so easily controlled. ...

***

So with more phony references and applications of hypnotism, he secured himself a rental home within walking distance of the university, a home that was nice by local standards without sticking out for its size or eccentricity of décor. The TARDIS was parked in the side yard RV space, impersonating a recreational vehicle – excellent cover, actually; he would have to recommend adding vehicles to the chameleonic database when he got back to Gallifrey.

His mind now turned to his real work – not teaching biology, but finding a mate. He looked forward to it, actually; he was a sociable enough fellow, and Earth people were very sociable. One afternoon, after he moved a formidable selection of Earth-produced biology books and journals into his office (some of which were full of ideas so patently wrong he laughed out loud at them), he hooked up his computer to the Internet and began to carefully research Eugene's various bars, dance clubs and other venues for singles, trying to pick one that would be most likely to attract the sort of woman he was interested in for this undertaking. Aside from satisfying his own personal preferences, she would have to be adventurous, daring, a risk-taker on a grand scale to even consider the proposal he was planning on making.

He paused a moment, staring out the window at the students hurrying to and fro in the rain. And how was he going to make that proposal, anyway? What was he supposed to say? "Hello, I'm a member of a highly advanced civilization that might be an ancestor of yours, and I want to prove our taxonomical connection by getting you pregnant"? He shook his head, smiling. Maybe he should be looking at a mental hospital, he thought.

But instead the prime candidate literally walked into his office and invited him out for lunch.

Her name was Hannah Shapiro and she was a physics professor. She described herself as "standard issue Ashkenazi Jew," meaning thick, wavy black hair, expressive oval face, pale, clear skin, smiling, rosy cheeks. Her mouth and eyes were both wide and generous; her cheekbones prominent; her small nose curved like a raptor's beak. She was moderately tall, the top of her head reaching his chin. He accepted her invitation not connecting her to his project, but by the time their food arrived, he was wondering how exactly he was going to explain to her what he was doing here.

Granted, it wouldn't have been as difficult to explain as it would have been when he first came to Earth 200 years ago. Back then, most humans found the idea of other species in the universe preposterous. He remembered an argument at a bar in which he said, rather mildly, that given the size of the universe, thinking you were completely alone in all its vastness was somewhat arrogant, and being laughed at. Now non-humans and part-humans wandered through towns, even smaller communities like this one, sat in classes from preschool on up, even taught some of those classes, and nobody batted and eye. It was just that the humans didn't know about the Gallifreyans specifically – and, en masse, could not.

He gently probed her – no mind control, he had no reason to do that now – on her background, and she was willing enough to discuss it. She had been admitted to Starfleet Academy at sixteen, but in her second year she contracted a drug-resistant form of mononucleosis and had to go on medical leave from her studies. She survived, but for several years was so physically weak that she couldn't handle the rigors of Starfleet training, and so had to give up her hopes of serving. She still hoped to do scientific research in space someday; right now, she was researching the effects of space travel on various new alloys, trying to determine which one stood up best to the stresses of time warp distortion. She then asked him about his background (which he was open about, at least as far as the concocted story went) and his research (he muttered something about the mating habits of worms, but he really didn't want to talk shop).

He was fascinated by her, despite her limited (next to his) intelligence; she was smart enough, alert, generous, pretty, robust-seeming despite her earlier poor health. He kept meeting her for lunch several times a week and kept enjoying her company, kept thinking about how he was going to tell her who he was and where he was from and what he was doing here; nevertheless, it wasn't he who initiated their liaison. In fact, he completely missed all the cues that she was interested in one. She sat close to him, leaned against him, touched his hand, patted his knee – and it all went right over his head. Only when she invited him to her home for dinner and an in-home movie one Sunday night and then kissed him while they were doing the dishes did he realize she was "interested."

The problem, he realized as he stared into her dark, sparkling eyes, tingling from head to toe, was that none of her more subtle overtures had occurred in what he'd believed to be the proper context – a nightclub, a bar, or otherwise "out" for an evening. They had all taken place at work, or at least in a work-related context. Obviously he'd misread the culture ... not surprising; cultural anthropology wasn't his field ... but he did reverse the polarity of his neutron flow quickly enough and initiated a kiss of his own. She took his hand and led him to the shelves containing her collection of movies; he let her choose, and she put it in the player and turned it on. As the opening credits rolled, he kissed her again ... and that was all of that film they saw. When it ended, she led him to her bedroom, where he discovered exactly why it was that humans were so obsessed with coitus.

The next night she spent at his place, and the next, and the next ... and he still had no idea how he was going to tell her the truth about himself.

***

"Norm, I'm pregnant."

It was about a month after their first night together. She sat in his office, paler than usual, eyes staring at something a thousand meters away.

"That's wonderful news!" he exclaimed – then realized it might not be so wonderful to her. "But I thought you were using contraceptives."

"I wasn't the first night," she said.

"I see." But he couldn't keep the grin off his face. He was right about the curse, and perhaps about the biology/taxonomy as well ... it remained to be seen whether the child could be brought to term, but -- ! And so quickly, too!

Her voice softly insinuated itself into his thoughts. "I'm not sure I'm going to keep the baby."

"What ... what do you –" He remembered reading some novel where a woman who became pregnant spoke of not being able to "keep" the baby. She ended up going to an agency that found a mated pair with fertility issues; they took in the child and raised it as their own.

"Well, I don't know why you've come to that conclusion," he said quietly, "but if you don't feel up to the task of rearing a child, I'll be happy to take on the primary responsibility myself –"

"I don't mean that," she said, giving him a puzzled stare. "I mean I think I'm going to have an abortion."

Orlonamaorlion found himself on his feet, shouting "You can't do that!"

"Oh for heaven's sake, sit down!" she exclaimed in a rare show of irritation. "It's been a hundred and fifteen years since a woman's right to control her reproductive destiny was written into the Constitution."

"Yes, yes, I'm sorry ... that's not what I meant ..." He sat down and tried to pull his thoughts together. Something told him that "But I need the child because it's the outcome of a biological experiment" wouldn't go over well. "I just ... I want children, very much ... never thought I'd get the chance, though ..." That was true enough. He took her hands, which felt, even to him, like blocks of ice. "We never discussed that before, but ... I have been thinking of you in that way ... we get along, we're intellectually compatible, we're physically compatible, we're ... emotionally compatible ..." He squeezed her hands tightly, hoping to she'd get what he meant, and she squeezed back. "I mean, we've practically been joined at the hip lately ..."

"And I'm not against them, or you; just ... I'm not ready for such a commitment yet." She looked at him. "And I don't want to be a single parent."

"Well, no, Hannah, I'm not suggesting that –"

"We hardly know each other."

"We have eleven months at least to rectify that."

"_Eleven_?"

"Yes, until the baby's born –"

She gave him a sharp look, and he realized he'd just made a colossal blunder.

"Norm ... I thought you were a human."

"Would you have a problem with it if I wasn't?" he asked in a very worried tone. He was sure she would. That was a significant detail. In fact, he'd told her he'd grown up on this world, and gave her no reason to suspect he wasn't human. In short, he'd lied to her. And this was _not_ the way he'd hoped to inform her that he had misled her.

"No, no, not at all, not at all ... I just thought ... you have a human-sounding name ... but what species are you if you expect the gestation to last _eleven_ months? I took a xenobiology course as an undergrad, just for an elective, and I had to learn the gestation periods for all known sentient species – and the longest gestation period among the humanoids was the Vulcans, and that was only _ten_ months."

He sighed and decided it was best to tell her everything now.

"I doubt you've heard of us before ..."

***

Professors Leon and Shapiro surprised the entire Natural Sciences Department at the University of Oregon by hopping an ion jumper to Reno one weekend and getting married. It wasn't long afterward that they announced their resignations effective the end of this academic year; they were going to take up residence on a remote planet and start up a scientific field station there. Hannah was thrilled to be going into space at last, and Norm was happy to go anywhere or nowhere as long as she was with him.

In his spare time, though, he was reading everything he could about human obstetrics. Gallifrey had extensive literature about gynecological matters in the female Dominus temporum, and it seemed that there weren't any significant differences in Homo sapiens; but obviously obstetrics was a long-neglected field on Gallifrey. He knew a fair amount about the looming process and the problems that could occur when a child is separated from the loom and must breathe on its own, and he figured that by synthesizing that knowledge this with what he read in Terran medical literature he would be able to meet most of the problems he faced.

They gave out that she was pregnant right before finals of the spring quarter, and were showered with small gifts for the baby at a going-away party. They all fit into one box, and that box, along with such other belongings she couldn't bear to leave behind, was stuffed into the TARDIS.

In the dead of a very rainy night, even for Eugene, he led her from their now-empty house for the last time and entered the TARDIS, still posing as a Winnebago, and led her into the cabin they would share for the journey to their new home.

"I remember the first time you let me in the TARDIS," she said, following him into the "bathroom" and then beyond into the part of the TARDIS that hadn't been designed to fool nosy humans. "I still halfway thought you were insane, or playing some kind of weird practical joke, or conducting a psychological experiment. I thought I was going to faint when I realized how _big_ it was inside."

He chuckled, turned and kissed her forehead. "You _were_ a little skeptical."

"Yes ... I knew you weren't human after you demonstrated that you had two hearts – and here I thought you were just incredibly excitable! -- but the rest of it was just too far out to readily accept." She smiled up at him.

"No regrets?" he asked.

"None whatsoever. Oh, I know I'll never be able to see your homeworld, I'll probably never see mine again, and someday we'll have to send the baby back to Gallifrey for schooling, but ..." She looked up at him and when she spoke again, her voice trembled a little. "I knew you were the one for me the first time we met – even if it was all just a big experiment to you."

He pulled her close. "Don't think of it that way," he murmured. "Or do, but in the sense that every time we take a chance on something, every time we make a decision, it's an experiment. You're experimenting on me, at least as much as I'm experimenting on you. The universe itself is nothing more than someone's big, ongoing experiment--"

"Ow," she said.

"Ow?"

"The baby kicked." She took his hand and guided it to her swollen belly. "Here, just push a little –"

Something struck the palm of his hand with tiny force.

"I felt that!" he exclaimed. "Does that hurt you, when he kicks like that?"

"No," she said. "I only say 'ow' out of surprise. It is a little odd to think of an semi-independent entity living inside me, moving of its own will and so on."

He gently caressed her stomach, and the baby inside. "What shall we name you, little guy?" he asked her stomach.

"You keep calling him 'little guy.' What makes you so sure it's a boy?"

"I can sense it," he replied. Her wrist watch beeped, and he led her to her recliner – he had her sit down and put her feet up for half an hour three or four times a day. He told her it was to reduce edema in her lower legs, but it was also to reduce the chances that she would miscarry. "Same as I sense it when a child is being 'loomed' – you can tell the boys apart from the girls just by the tiny little thoughts they start to have, even before the looming is complete. No, they don't think about different things, it's just something ... it's like the sound of their voice, in a way. Their thoughts come to a slightly different part of the mind."

"What does an unborn baby think about?"

"A Gallifreyan child? Well, usually their first thoughts revolve around eleven-dimensional space – don't look at me like that, Hannah! I'm only having you on."

She stuck her tongue out at him.

"Seriously, they don't think at all for the first three or four months. When they start, it's mostly some variation on 'What's going on around here?'"

"You say some of the most extraordinary things," Hannah told him as he found one of her blankets and tucked it over her. "My mind, everything I know, everything I will ever know, could probably fit in a part of your brain the volume of the first joint of my pinky finger." He suppressed the answer that flashed into his mind: _Oh no, no, your entire big toe at least! Maybe both of them!_ "Yet you fuss over me like a mother hen over her chicks."

He knew what she meant on a literal level – she'd brought her chickens with her when she moved in to his house, and the avians were going to their new home with them -- and thought he knew what she was getting at metaphorically. "Well, we don't necessarily lose our ability to care about others just because you understand eleven-dimensional physics."

"That's good to know," she said, looking at him with full eyes, and he bent over to kiss her lips.

***

The baby was born prematurely – at only ten months – but the delivery seemed to go well enough and the boy came out healthy and vigorous. When he was eight days old, Hannah gave him a name to be known by among her people: Adam ben Hannah.

"Adam because he's the first of his kind, and 'ben Hannah' means 'son of Hannah,'" she explained. "He'd have your name, too, if you had a Hebrew name."

At the same time, he told her what his names on Gallifrey would be – both the name he would use all his life in the most intimate of situations, like with his parents or with his spouse, if he acquired one, and Thetasigma, the name he would use through childhood -- but she seemed uninterested. He'd halfway expected her to quip that Thetasigma sounded like a fraternity, but she let it slide, In fact, she was letting a lot of opportunities for wisecracks go by the wayside. Orlonamaorlion put that down to her simply being exhausted after the labor, plus some kind of hormonal change, and told her to rest, that he'd take care of the child until she recovered.

He figured that would take a week, maybe two, but when a month passed and she was not showing any progress, he became alarmed. He sent a message over the UFP's colonist medical consultation subspace channel, describing what was wrong with Hannah. The response was it was probably lingering post-partum depression, and it came with formulae for several anti-depressants and advice on dosages and the best sequence for trying the drugs – and advice for him not to worry too much about her, that postpartum depression was easily treated these days.

Three more months went by. None of the anti-depressants worked, and Hannah grew weaker and more lethargic. Orlonamaorlion sent a panicked message to the UFP, which instructed him to bring her to a place called Starbase 29. He did so.

In Sickbay, they were told she would be seen by a Doctor Crusher. Crusher turned out to be a slender, attractive female with long red hair, about the same age as Hannah. Hannah seemed to like Crusher, although it was difficult to say for certain – she was still too lethargic to really express much interest in anything. Orlonamaorlion was allowed to remain in the room, and he amused himself by playing with Adam rather than pay too close attention to the examination – the process was so primitive it was maddening, and he could think of about fifteen different ways to improve their equipment on first glance. But he wasn't here for their advanced technology, but rather their admittedly more expert knowledge of the human body.

Crusher was puzzled. She said that there was significant damage to Hannah's internal organs, but couldn't figure out what had caused it. He took her into his confidence (enhancing her trustworthiness with a slight bit of hypnosis) and told her about himself – at least enough to establish that he wasn't a member of any species in the Federation's medical database. She took samples of his blood and tissue and ran tests on them. She called in consultants in a variety of fields – including Orlonamaorlion himself, as the only available expert on his people's biology. He was able to tweak each of these consultants' willingness to discuss this with outsiders the same way he had adjusted Crusher's mind. After that, he sat through endless-seeming meetings, listening with half an ear while rapidly scanning their medical databases, until he knew as much as any of them did about human medicine. It was he who realized first what must have gone wrong – and his sudden hunch was confirmed with the proper testing.

There was an incompatability between human and Gallifreyan blood, not unlike the Rh incompatability that occurs when a human mother is Rh negative and her fetus is Rh positive. As in Rh incompatability, when Adam was born, his blood mingled with Hannah's. But where the Rh incompatability problem occurs when the mother's system creates antibodies against the baby's Rh positive proteins, in this case the baby's immune system produced antibodies against several factors in her human blood. Those then traveled into her body, discovered all this foreign tissue, and attacked it. Those elements of his immune system, which were otherwise analogous to human white blood cells, acted like a virus, taking over her human red blood cells, reproducing, and spreading – slowly, but spreading.

If they'd discovered this early on, it would have been relatively simple to treat – the formula for a treatment came to Orlonamaorlion along with the diagnosis, and it eliminated the antibodies. But it did nothing for the severe damage to Hannah's internal organs. She only grew weaker and weaker.

"We can do something about the organs," Beverly (he was on a first-name basis with Crusher now) said. "We can grow new organs from an undamaged tissue sample. No problem there. It's so routine nobody thinks about it. We can even put her in stasis so she will live until the organs are ready. It's just ... I'm not sure she can live through the surgery. We can't perform surgery on a body in stasis."

"Is there anything wrong with the baby?" Orlonamaorlion asked suddenly.

"As far as I can tell, he's fine. If he were fully human I'd say without a second thought that he was thriving. I don't see any reason to suspect there's something wrong with him, but I'll look him over just to be sure." Beverly smiled. "He's so cute, and he just loves it when I play 'This Little Piggy' with him. When I get to 'This little piggy went wee wee wee all the way home,' he squeals like it's the funniest thing ever!"

"Yes, I've seen you doing that. Just one question – what's a piggy?" he asked.

***

Orlonamaorlion watched while Beverly took tissue samples from Hannah to grow the new organs, and he spoke to Hannah reassuringly while she was put in stasis. Then he told Beverly he would be back in plenty of time for the surgery, took the baby and went back to Gallifrey.

He first presented little Thetasigma to the media as evidence his theory had been correct, and said, "Behold, Homo gallifreyensis." That was quoted all over the newscasts and, he suspected, would be his epitaph. But that wasn't why he had gone home.

He went to the government, hoping to convince the authorities to let him donate a regeneration to her. It was done in some cases when a Time Lord was on his or her last life, faced an early demise and had something important to complete. He pleaded his case on the grounds that she should be able to survive at least until her son reached 100; and in any case, since he had caused her current ailment, forfeiting a life was probably a just punishment.

But the authorities turned him down, concluding that his motivation was purely personal. It was sad that his actions had inadvertently caused her predicament, they said, and they could understand his feelings in the matter, but he had not acted maliciously, nor negligently; and nothing would be served by shortening his life to preserve hers a little while longer. They disregarded that Hannah's species was so short-lived that another 100 years would be a miracle to her; they thought about 100 years in terms of a normal Gallifreyan lifespan, where 100 years was like a few months. Orlonamaorlion appealed the matter as far as he could with no luck.

So he took Adam and went back to the starbase. The whole visit had taken only three weeks. When he arrived, he discovered Hannah's new organs were growing well, and the surgery could take place in another three weeks. He spent that time caring for and playing with Adam -- he did enjoy "This Little Piggy," and a lot of other baby games, Terran, Gallifreyan and otherwise; and his unbridled laughter helped Orlonamaorlion keep his spirits up.

The day of Hannah's first surgery, he realized he would not be able to stand sitting around waiting, and went to a holodeck instead. He was critiquing a recreation of the Battle of Hastings for its creator when he was urgently summoned to the operating room over the intercom. He raced through the halls of the Starbase, arriving just in time to say good-bye to Hannah. At the very end, her eyes fluttered open, seemed to recognize him, then closed as gently as a flower's petals closing at night.

For hours after she breathed her last, he sat holding her hand between both of his, whispering the same word in Gallifreyan over and over again. He heard the conversation between three of the nurses, the Starbase commander (a Vulcan) and Beverly, wondering what he was saying. Finally he decided to meet the matter head-on. He turned around, stared at them one after the other and said, "It means 'Come back.'"

The others understood, but the Vulcan raised a slanted eyebrow. "That is not logical," she said. "All life ends. It may not be a comfort, but it is a fact."

"It does," Orlonamaorlion agreed, "but for my people, it doesn't end like this." And he got up and left Sickbay before they could ask him what he meant. He collected his son from the young man in the holodeck, took him back to the cabin assigned to his family, turned down the lights, sat with the child in his arms and tried to think, but his mind seemed as broken as his hearts.

***

They asked to do an autopsy and he agreed. They found, as they expected, extensive damage on a cellular level to her internal organs, and concluded it was due to the G-factor (as he called it in his own mind). When the autopsy was over, he asked for her to be sent back to Earth for the burial rites of her people, in accordance with the wishes of her parents. He hadn't spoken to them at all since Hannah's death; he couldn't stand to.

He sat through the traditional rites of her people in their house of worship, automatically decoding the prayers uttered in at least two related ancient languages, and rode in the hearse along with her simple wooden coffin to a cemetery. They lowered her coffin into the grave prepared for her; then the leader said a few words and shoveled some dirt in after her – and handed the shovel to Orlonamaorlion. He was a little surprised, but he knew enough to follow the leader's example. Three shovels of dirt later, the leader asked him to put three more in on their child's behalf, and he did so. He watched as her parents, siblings, cousins, nieces, nephews, friends, colleagues and former students all added their three shovels of dirt to the grave. Only when everyone had taken their turns did the professionals move in, quickly filling in the hole.

He was supposed to remain on Earth for the next seven days, mourning with her family, none of whom knew he wasn't a nice Jewish boy as his wife had led them to believe. But during the meal of comfort after the burial, and as he sat on a low stool and everyone indulged their grief, recalling Hannah, cooing over and pitying the baby, telling Orlonamaorlion that they hoped he would be comforted among the mourners of beit Yisrael, he realized he was not going to be able to take seven days of this. Gallifreyan bereavement rituals were actually pretty close to Jewish ones – although at a different point in the process. Where Jewish people started with plenty of companionship and opportunity to discuss the one who had died, a person who loses a life partner on Gallifrey is presumed to require a lengthy period of solitude first. Someone is always nearby to make take care of the bereaved one's physical needs and to make sure he or she didn't do something rash in their grief, but whoever that person is leaves the bereaved one alone. And it didn't help that he felt like a fraud – or worse, a murderer – before her family. They had been told that she died of complications suffered during childbirth – true enough – and they didn't seem to want to know more. But he felt guilty.

In the middle of the night, he took the baby, left a note for his in-laws begging their forgiveness for leaving without warning, and went back to Gallifrey.

***

On Gallifrey, the first thing he did was to resign his post at the Academy. They assured him he would be welcome back any time he wanted to resume his research. That he accepted gratefully, though he was sure he would never want to study biology ever again.

He retreated to the ancestral seat of the House of Lungbarrow, high in the mountains. The boy, who already showed signs of extremely high intelligence, even for a Gallifreyan, took his place among his loomed cousins and began the educational process that Orlonamaorlion hoped would someday make him a Time Lord. Orlonamaorlion finally got his solitude, but he ended it more because he was sick of his own company rather than having exhausted his sorrow for Hannah.

Time went on, but just as Hannah never recovered from the G-factor disease, Orlonamaorlion never recovered from her death. The primary symptom seemed to be his feelings toward the boy – he could no longer stand to think of him by the name his mother had given him, nor by either of his Gallifreyan names, nor by any name – he was just "the boy" now. The boy, whose fair colouring indicated he was more Lungbarrow than Shaprio, was quite curious and always getting into things, and Orlonamaorlion's reaction was usually an anger far out of proportion to the offense committed. Orlonamaorlion was very proud of his son's intelligence and curiosity, but he could never show him that; when the boy was actually near him, he could only think about his mother, and remember that this child had cost his mother her life. As the boy grew older, he began to act as though he were afraid of Orlonamaorlion. Shortly before his fourth birthday, Orlonamaorlion raised his hand to stroke the boy's hair, and the boy ducked and raised his arms as if expecting to be hit – and he was slow to lower them again.

Orlonamaorlion didn't sleep at all that night. He didn't exactly cry, but his throat ached and tears stung his eyes. He missed Hannah more as time went on, not less. He thought how proud she would be of the little boy they had created, and how she would hate the rift that seemed to be growing between father and son, and the pain grew greater. And he thought she would say that it wasn't the boy's fault, what had happened.

No, Orlonamaorlion told himself. The boy hand't killed her. _He_ had killed her. No, not on purpose, but it was his actions, his selfish interest in being right, that led to her death. He was only on his second life; he couldn't bear the thought of going through eleven more of these this way. And every time he started to forget, there was the little boy to remind him, to keep the wound from healing.

He reached a decision.

He got up as the sun was beginning to make its presence known in the western sky, woke the boy, and took him to a promontory overlooking the valley where the capitol city lay. He held the boy's hand tightly as the mist started to lift, revealing the spires, towers and other edifices. Finally, the sun leaped over the horizon; not long afterward, the Academy's tall, stately spire revealed itself, a finger beckoning to all who could see to discover the wonders of knowledge.

Orlonamaorlion pointed it out to the lad and told him that he needed to study hard so he could go there and make his house proud. The House of Lungbarrow ... and the House of Shapiro, his mother's people.

"I never heard of Shapiro before," the boy said, puzzled.

"The Shapiros aren't from Gallifrey," Orlonamaorlion said. "They're Dominus terranus, from Sol, in the point in the Hunter's Spear." He sighed. At the last meeting of the taxonomical commission, they'd voted to recategorize the sentient species of the Orion Arm into the genus Dominus. It was a meaningless victory for him. "Some day I'll tell you the whole story about her."

He couldn't bring himself to tell the boy everything he wanted to say – that he was going away, that he didn't know how long he would be gone or if he was going to come back. He wasn't sure precisely where he was going – other than to some part of the galaxy where he wouldn't see Sol in the night sky. Or, for that matter, any part of the Orion Arm.


	3. Elementary, my dear Watson

"Then what happened?" John asked. They were sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea that Sherlock – that is, Orlonamaorlion - had made.

"I became human," Orlonamaorlion said. There wasn't the slightest degree of condescension in his deep voice.

"How?"

"It's called a Chameleon Arch. It rewrites your genes – very painfully - stores your memories in one of these fob-watch-like containers and it simultaneously implants whatever cover story you've concocted beforehand. When you open it, it reverses your genetic rewrite and restores your memories." He sat back and smiled. "I had developed it before I went to Earth. I came here – this world, this time - and tested it. Apparently it worked."

"And your cover story is that you were a genius consulting detective who was purely rational and didn't like women."

"Something like that."

"Because you wanted to stay faithful to your late wife and not feel any emotion whatsoever."

The naked expression of grief on Sherlock's face was startling. "You're probably right, John."

"But then what about Mycroft?" John asked hastily.

"What about him?"

"Is he a – a what do you call it, a Gallifreyan too?"

Orlonamaorlion just smiled. "What do you think, John?"

The two sat drinking tea and staring into various distances. "So …" John finally said.

"So?"

"What happens to you now? Do you just zoom back to your home world?"

"No, John, not until the Doctor comes back. And he will. I promise you he will."

"Why?"

"Well, he'll need to refuel," Orlonamaorlion said. "And while he's here, he'll want to see if I did take the hint and open the watch. And when he does, I'll have a lot of explaining to do."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I abandoned him when he was four, he's going to want to know why." And in another un-Sherlockian gesture, Orlonamaorlion sighed and ran his hands down his face. "That's a conversation I'm not looking forward to having with the boy."

"That man – the Doctor – is your son?"

Orlonamaorlion smiled. "Didn't you notice the cheek bones?"


End file.
